@MikeQ A Diablo 5e system, a short story about DNA-based time travel, a Wizard's Duel card game system, and running a 5e game for a bunch of new players... I'll have to put "Descent into the Abyss" on hold. Same As LLKoM :P

In our campaign, we have a Half-Orc Barbarian. Very original. We are going along this cliff-side fortress and are worried about falling off. The Half-Orc's player jokingly says that he'll be fine, due to his Relentless Endurance. But I was thinking about it, and it seems like he's right, but this...

@Ben Won't be me. My game mastering hands are full with an existing queue. The current herculean labour is to sift through the various Pathfinder short form modules, find interesting ones, surgically edit them, and - most difficult of all - schedule a session.

Oh, didn't realize there'd been a bunch of texts about the subject already. Must be in a side room. Just saw the string of Robert Columbia edits and thought "That's odd..." Otherwise, just waiting for the bus to come so I can get off work :)

What's the purpose of a lightning round? It occurs if the game extends for too long - one player hasn't won yet but both have expended all resources. Do you want to tip in favor of the player who's behind (negative feedback) or the player who's ahead (positive feedback)?

Just got back from game night, have to say thank you to the ROs, chatizens, and experienced users who helped contain that conflagration (here and mainsite) earlier. It wasn't fun for you, but you quickly and firmly and compassionately took care of things, sparing many other users the trouble in the process. You're a credit to humankind. I mean that seriously.

Good. I've got a player who keeps throwing his characters into hot water, and is 3-for-4 in our last four sessions killing them off. I almost had him again tonight, but a well-timed crit turned away the bulette that was chasing the party in their sledge =)

(I figure when a 94hp creature takes 52 damage in one blow, even the ravenous bulette might turn away. But I've scratched out "no encounter" in the table and replaced with "bulette's back". We may get five Jaws movies out of this.)

My character has 20 charisma in one of my DND games, but I want to take the Actor feat. This question kind of has two parts:
RAW, can I take it and change the stat increase to another stat?
If I take it and change the stat increase to another stat is it balanced still?

In a universe adjacent to our own lies a world known as Runia. This world, once peaceful and idyllic, is now threatened by a monstrous being from its prehistory. A group of adventurers known as Whiskey Company have risen up to do what they can to fight this entity known only as Nagat. They have trekked far across the mortal realms in search of the shards of Barrinoth, the Titan of Justice, in hopes of returning him to his full power.

I have no strong opinion about the pronunciation of gif (I personally do with "s" due to stupid cultural memes) but I want to know if people arguing based on the "G coming from Graphics" pronounce "scuba" like "ska-ba"

unrelated but on the topic of TTRPGs, I do have a request for help from y'all - help finding character art to use as a token image in Roll20

I will soon be playing Damakos, a male Zariel tiefling bard (planned College of Glamour) with the Faceless background in a *Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus* campaign, but I haven't yet settled on an image to use for my character token. Obviously I can basically use any generic tiefling art as a placeholder, but I'm hoping you all will be able to help me find that which I have not found on my own.

- When without his mask/costume, I'm thinking Damakos maybe has a few physical attributes vaguely reminiscent of Zariel's archdevil form. He's born to a tiefling female and a Calishite human m…

But... "liitoshitsaaja" which should be parsed as "liitos" (joint) "hitsaaja" (welder) to make "fitting welder" (I had to google the correct term) got at one point parsed as "liito-" (flying/gliding) in the front and "-saaja" (recipient) in the back, with some dirty word that it thought it shouldn't translate in between... :>

Bing Translate was also reaaaally zany at one point, in many different ways. One was that they apparently used Microsoft's documentation as corpus --- "wizard" got consistently translated in its "guided software process" meaning.

"You're a helpful program interface Harry"

3

And it translated a variety of Finnish place names as being "London" in English.

@Axoren An 11th-level ability I've seen in 3.5 D&D, Aura of Perfect Order (a Devoted Spirit stance from Tome of Battle) amounts to "once per round, decide that instead of rolling, you're going to take 11". This probably isn't worth the same in 5e because of bounded accuracy, but consider that predictability is worth something. Determine the kinds of monsters you'll be throwing at them and compare their attack bonus to the monsters' AC and try to envision how fights go.

I was planning on asking the following question:
Does each warlock pact type from 4e have an equivalent in 5e?
I know little of 4e, but am familiar with 5e. I know there are various types of pact in 4e and was interested to know what their equivalents would be in 5e.
Of the little ...

@Powerdork for any well-built character the ability to take 11 on a raw attack roll probably translates to autohit in the vast majority of cases; my recollection of other people running the numbers is that in general you'd expect a character to hit appropriate enemies about two-thirds of the time

I'm building my character, a Half-Elf Ranger, and I'm a little confused about how to work out the attack bonus and the damage bonus.
So, please tell me if I've got this right:
I'm proficient with a longbow. That means my attack roll is 1d20 + prof bonus + Dex modifier.
The damage roll however ...

@doppelgreener can't thank you enough for your explanation on hazards in the close question thing. (On Meta SE) I guess Jeff's remarks from 8 or so years ago regarding help vampires and the dream of creating sites for experts is no longer canon.

I find it massively hilarious (and slightly disappointing) that whenever Hollywood tries to make a good vs. evil conflict with the Greek gods, they always pick evil to be the one major Greek god who wasn't a massive jerk (well, depending on how you interpret the Persephone myth).

@Yuuki The OG interpretation is like a lot of old stories... a bit too rapey for my liking. I'm more of a fan of the modern interpretations that weren't like that. I think my favorite is, "I just want out of my Mom's house for a while, and Hades just being okay with being thrown under the bus."

@doppelgreener Everyone knows that Athena's smarts came from Metis, given that Zeus thought that the best way to prevent a Cronos-esque uprising was to swallow his (well, Metis wasn't his wife... baby mama?) whole. Because that strategy worked so well for his father. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I suppose.

@GcL I'm not certain how I feel about the implication that winter is a result of severe empty nest syndrome, but it's certainly preferable over other interpretations of Hades and Persephone.

@doppelgreener Your nicely upvoted answer to Theresa's post about the road map, and the concerns that you raised about SE/SO making the closing of questions private, since getting a question closed is so unfriendly ... etc. (I note that one of the mods has chimed in during comments to say there will some more granularity make known soon . ... Des?) sorry, meta SE, not our meta. And yeah, I liked your quality alarm post a lot. You put time and effort into that, and I think it paid off

i'm going to leave it be until they demonstrate how they're actually going to implement it, and i'm sure they will get some very ... polarised responses. and then i'll probably suggest they need to A/B test it.

and yeah, one of the engineers, Des, is engaging. which i'm happy about.

i'd reached out internally about my concerns, and staff asked me to share them in a public post, which i did, so i'm happy it's being taken on board well

@KorvinStarmast regarding that site for experts thing: i think that concept was already going away in 2013ish once they did a double-take and realised the broader stack exchange network was also largely for hobbyists, and everything was still working for fine. "experts" at that point had already been redefined from "people who had years of professional experience and/or a degree" to "people who were interested and knowledgeable on a subject".

part of the factor was that, if SO really is just a site for experts, then who's asking half of the questions? not the experts. and even an expert on one subject will be a dunce as they start on a new technology—and they still need to be able to ask questions too, and may be doing no better than a university first-year on the topic.

so there was a bit of "hmmmm. i guess ... we're not just for experts? yeah, okay, let's roll with that."

You were remarking on the redefinition mentioned by doppel >"been redefined from "people who had years of professional experience and/or a degree" to "people who were interested and knowledgeable on a subject" Further asking "But for the professional stacks, is that the case?"

yeah it was basically a period of re-evaluating and realising that when you've got a lot of beginners and hobbyists learning from your sites, and they were actually doing really really well, then the definition of "experts for experts" wasn't actually correlated to the practice anymore. so there was a big difference between the theory and the practice, and they resolved that by embracing the new status quo.

I'll try to portray this as best as possible.
I have a Wizard 3 and Master Specialist 1.
As a Wizard I have the following saves: +1, +1, +3
As Master Specialist on 1st level I get: 0, 0, +2
So do I simply add the +2 to the Will Save?
It seems like "cheating", as a normal Wizard would ha...

@doppelgreener I think they responded to a query about that on the post notices announcement. Not in a place to easily look it up but IIRC their numbers and studies showed no change in response except more confusion about what it actually meant.

After a ton of discussion, work and input from the community, we're rolling out the remainder of major closing changes that you've helped us design, as discussed in these prior posts.
They're live, network-wide RIGHT NOW!!! See also: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/06/the-war-of-the-closes/
...

> Where did the "On Hold" label go? "On Hold" had been used to label recently closed questions. The idea was that this language would imply less permanence to the current state than "Closed". However, user research showed that this distinction was generally found to be confusing to users at all levels, and did not seem to have an effect on reopen rates. So we have removed this label. All Closed posts are now labeled as Closed but only the label has changed. Edits within the first five days will still put the question in the reopen queue.

For further issues, bugs and feedback that have not been covered by existing answers here please feel free to ask a new question.
A few minutes ago, new Post Notices were launched across the Stack Exchange network. This includes all public sites, all meta sites, and all Basic and Business tier...

Huh I'm not sure I was ever aware that that was the reason for the change. I guess that would handily explain their choice of metric. Though, I'm not sure they should have changed it just because it failed that goal...

The Curse:
Clockwork Curse
All Attack Rolls the cursed target makes replace their d20 roll with a 10 instead of rolling, as per the effect of Clockwork Amulet.
Extra Details:
This curse is expected to apply for at least a full in-game day.
Encounters for the day will come from the Fores...

As a GM, I strive to make the best experience for my group and adapt and improve my style and skill. I usually do this by live observation and asking for inputs after the session.
My problem lies in after session Q&A. Usually I ask them "Do you have fun? Which part is fun? Which part is not fun?...

One of my players got frightened by a Boss after being hit by a wrathful smite, and he's trying to put himself between a 5ft diameter and 10ft tall pillar and the Boss enemy.
E being the Boss enemy, and P being the Player. Black square is the pillar. On the left image, can the Boss still see the...